


One Year Later

by la_muerta



Series: Shadowhunter Bingo entries [8]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Immortality, M/M, Post-Canon, Shadowhunter Bingo 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:13:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24340372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/la_muerta/pseuds/la_muerta
Summary: The morning after Clary chases Jace down a dark alley and remembers his name, everything changes.For the Shadowhunter Bingo square:Immortality
Relationships: Clary Fray/Jace Wayland, Lorenzo Rey/Andrew Underhill, Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, Simon Lewis/Isabelle Lightwood
Series: Shadowhunter Bingo entries [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1570297
Comments: 39
Kudos: 203
Collections: SHBingo





	One Year Later

"Magnus!" 

Magnus woke up with a frown. There was a smell of burnt pancakes in the air - Alec must have had some kind of kitchen mishap again. Magnus yawned and pulled on a robe as he crossed the living room towards the kitchen, then stopped short when he stepped on something warm and soft.

He looked down in surprise - it was a pancake. In fact, every conceivable surface of the kitchen was covered in fluffy pancakes, spilling out into the living room, and his husband was standing wide-eyed in the middle of an explosion of buttery pancakes with bright golden sparks crackling from his hands. 

"I was going to make breakfast in bed for us but I burnt some and I was trying to figure out if I could salvage any of it, and this happened," Alec said nervously.

Magnus quickly banished most of the pancakes and approached Alec cautiously. "It's ok, Alexander. I'm here. Take a deep breath, that's it."

As Alec visibly calmed down, the magic around him died down. Magnus took Alec's hands in his, and examined them - nothing seemed out of ordinary. Then he caught sight of the alliance rune Clary had drawn on Alec a year ago when they had all gone to Edom to rescue Magnus, and Magnus frowned, looking at the back of his own hand, where Clary had drawn the same rune to link him to Izzy.

"This rune - it faded away for me the night that Clary lost her memories," Magnus said.

"It did for me too. I knew I felt something different from Jace last night. For the love of the Angel, what has he done now?" Alec muttered, twisting his wedding ring. 

Magnus frowned. "Something different? What kind of different?" 

Alec sighed. "He was happy. For the first time since Clary left us, he was actually happy."

Magnus drew soothing circles on the back of Alec's hand with his thumb, but before he could find the words to comfort Alec, a fire message zoomed through their window. Magnus caught it deftly and scanned the contents of the message, frowning.

"It's from Izzy. I think we might need to make an emergency trip back to New York, darling."

\--

The New York Institute had been his home for more than twenty years, but Clary had wreaked havoc when she came into their lives, and her leaving had also set off a whole chain of events. Between many of the Institutes being massacred by Jonathan Morgenstern when they were still recovering from the aftermath of clearing the ranks of Valentine’s Circle and the attack on Alicante, the Clave had been baying for Clary's blood. It was only the fact that she'd basically been banished from the Shadow World by angelic decree that had saved her, but the rest of them had not gone unpunished. 

Alec had been forcibly removed from his position as Head of the New York Institute. Given his recent marriage to Magnus, and the fact that Magnus had saved Alicante by sealing the rift, Alec had been given the position of Inquisitor in Alicante as a "reward” - ripping him away from his family and giving him the unenviable task of cleaning up the messes created by the Morgensterns, as if there wasn’t a big enough target on his back from having married a male Downworlder, and the son of a Greater Demon at that. Moving to Alicante also meant that the Clave could keep a better eye on him and Magnus, and he’d had to grit his teeth to all the nasty looks and whispered insults Magnus had to bear for his sake when they were forced to socialise. To add insult to injury, even though Magnus had been given the title of High Warlock of Alicante, he’d basically been the _only_ warlock allowed in Alicante and had been treated like a (very expensive) warlock servant at the beck and call of the Clave. For bearing the heavenly fire and destroying Lilith and Edom, Izzy had been made Head of the New York Institute instead, also partly because nobody wanted to head an Institute that seemed to be the centre of all the trouble. And despite the strain it put on the parabatai bond, Jace had chosen to remain in New York and take over Izzy's old role of weapons master so he could torture himself with watching Clary from a distance. 

Things had gotten a little better when Alec had come up with the idea of having Shadowhunters work with a Downworlder partner, inspired by Clary’s alliance rune. More Downworlders had been gradually introduced into Institutes all over the world and Alicante itself, and Magnus had taken upon himself to lead and guide these Downworlders. It had taken a full year for Alec and Magnus to start carving out a semblance of respect and standing for themselves, and for all of them to try to adjust to their changes and losses - only for something new to happen just as they were getting comfortable.

Walking down the familiar hallways of the Institute now with Magnus by his side, it was strange how removed Alec felt from it. He couldn’t believe that he’d gotten married to Magnus right within these walls only last year; it felt like at least five years should have passed, with all the things that had happened. The people here were a little more used to Magnus being by his side and in fact some of them had been invited to the wedding, so most greeted both of them instead of just greeting Alec and pretending Magnus was invisible. 

Izzy was in her bedroom and Simon was sitting outside her door, apparently talking to himself. He got to his feet when he saw them, offering them a worried smile. 

"She won't let me in, so I've been talking to her through the door," he explained. 

"What happened?" Magnus asked. 

"So we were, um, just sleeping!" Simon said, shooting Alec a nervous glance. "And suddenly her hands started glowing and she kind of blasted me with some magic."

"Are you hurt?" Magnus asked. 

"No! No, it was really goo- um... I mean, it definitely didn't hurt." Simon cleared his throat, turning very red. "Anyway, Izzy would never hurt me. Unless I wanted it, which, um..."

Alec rolled his eyes and scowled at him. He had been on the receiving end of Magnus' accidental sex magic often enough to be very familiar with the effects. “Please just shut up, Simon."

Magnus knocked on the door. "Isabelle? It's Magnus. Can I come in?" 

Once Izzy gave her permission, they all entered the room gingerly. Much like Izzy had been this morning, there were golden sparks of magic jumping from her hands, but she was much more panicky than Alec had been and Alec wondered if it might be some lingering trauma from her experience with heavenly fire. With Magnus around, Simon finally convinced her that it would be safe enough for him to hold her hand, and she finally got her magic under control. 

"We should check on Jace next," Alec suggested. 

Jace was also still in his bedroom, highly unusual because he was normally in the training room at dawn, and his room looked like it’d been ransacked. The mirror had fallen off his dressing table but Jace had already swept up the glass, and despite the state of his room, Jace just looked slightly annoyed. In fact, this was probably the most cheerful Alec had seen him in months.

“What the hell? Jace, are you ok?” Alec asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jace replied distractedly, in the middle of trying to stuff all his clothes back inside his wardrobe. “I heard a voice when I woke up this morning and I thought… you know, I used to hear Jonathan in my head when Lilith turned me into the Owl. But it’s all fine now.” Alec was surprised that Jace had told them as much, given his habit of hiding everything that was bothering him.

“You heard a voice?” Magnus repeated.

“It was that stupid cactus Simon bought for me,” Jace muttered, gesturing at the windowsill. “It told me my hair was a mess and maybe I was due for a haircut and a touch-up dye job. What does a fucking cactus even know about hair, anyway?"

“Oh. The florist I bought it from was next to a hairdressers?” Simon offered uncertainly.

“Hold up. You were talking to your _cactus_?” Alec asked.

“Because Jace was bonded to Meliorn with the alliance rune and it gives him the power to commune with nature - literally,” Magnus explained.

Alec crossed his arms and tried to summon all the patience he had. “Jace, did you try to make contact with Clary last night?"

“I went to the opening of her exhibition,” Jace admitted. “But I was glamoured. And somehow she still managed to see me.”

“She’s never been able to see us,” Izzy murmured in surprise.

“Yeah, and she chased after me and remembered my name, so I asked her out for coffee,” Jace said, smiling a little at the memory. “But I didn’t tell her anything more, nothing about the Shadow World or any of that. As far as she knows, I’m just a guy with a lot of tattoos who likes her art."

"She's started regaining her memories out of the blue? Her memories were taken by the angels, not just some ordinary spell, and not so easily reversed. There's more to this than meets the eye," Magnus said. "And now that she's regaining her memories, I suppose we can assume that all of the runes she created are working again."

"We've got to find her. If she's remembering the Shadow World again in bits and pieces, I can't imagine how scary that must be for her," Izzy said urgently. 

"Plus, Clary was bonded to me. If Alec and Izzy are sparking like tinfoil in a microwave oven, and Jace is hearing plants talk, what's happening to Clary?" Simon said worriedly. "If we're lucky, it'll just be a craving for steak tartare, but..." 

"I got her number," Jace offered reluctantly, a little like it was a secret he hoped to keep to himself a little longer, and Alec suddenly realised that it was because Jace couldn’t lie while he was bonded to Meliorn. 

"You're going to have to call her, right now. I don't care how desperate it makes you seem because-" Izzy began, only for them to be interrupted by a fire message zooming towards her. 

She caught it deftly, sighing as she read it. "Meliorn and Lorenzo are waiting for us outside the Institute."

\--

Izzy had them ushered into her office. Lorenzo had remained High Warlock of Brooklyn and as far as Alec knew was still dating Underhill, and with the death of the old Seelie Queen, as one of her favoured knights Meliorn had been made advisor to the new Seelie Queen. As far as Alec knew, Izzy maintained a cordial relationship with both of them, but he was a bit taken aback when Meliorn attempted to give Izzy a kiss on the lips that she quickly deflected to a cheek kiss.

“Would _you_ like a kiss instead?” he asked Simon, and Simon backed away with a nervous laugh.

Lorenzo cleared his throat pointedly. “That’s not what we’re here for.” He undid the cufflinks on his left wrist and pulled up his sleeve to reveal the alliance rune with a dramatic flourish that made Magnus roll his eyes.

“We’re working on it,” Izzy assured him. “We’d appreciate if you keep this quiet of course. But we’re going to make contact with Clary and see if we can undo this as soon as possible."

"Why would you want to undo this? Isn't this exactly what all of you want?" Meliorn drawled.

"No! Why would I want to not be able to lie and get sassed by a potted plant?" Jace demanded incredulously.

"Because there's a very good chance that all of you Nephilim have also gained our immortality," Meliorn answered smugly, looking around the room. "Alec Lightwood-Bane, married to a warlock. Isabelle Lightwood, in love with a vampire. Jace Herondale, whose parabatai would pick immortality in a heartbeat if it meant that he could keep his family with him. And when Clary Fairchild returns to you, I do not think she will have any complaints about having her best friend, lover, and soon-to-be parabatai by her side for all eternity. Do you honestly still want to break our connection?"

Stunned silence descended on the room.

Magnus was the first to break it. “All of you stay put, especially Jace and Izzy. I’m going to check on Clary.” He turned and left the room in a hurry without a word to Alec and not meeting Alec’s eyes, and the moment he stepped out of the door there was an unmistakable sound of a portal opening through the Institute’s wards because obviously nobody had bothered fixing all the loopholes Magnus had put in over the years. Alec could read Magnus all too well now - the news had unsettled Magnus so deeply that he couldn’t even be around Alec at the moment, which hurt.

“We’ll be in touch,” Izzy told Meliorn and Lorenzo.

“I’m going check on something,” Alec muttered, and stomped out of her office.

He hadn’t really had a plan on what he was going to do or where he was going, but he had barely made it out of the door of the Institute when he heard someone calling his name.

“Will you take a walk with me?” Lorenzo asked, catching up to him.

Alec nodded stiffly and let Lorenzo lead the way. While they were no longer enemies and possibly even considered friendly now, he and Lorenzo didn't exactly hang out and chitchat. He knew what Lorenzo wanted to talk about - since Lorenzo was dating a shadowhunter, he probably wanted to ask if it was possible for Underhill to get the alliance rune as well, linking him to an immortal. In the late morning and in the middle of a Sunday, there were families all around the park but nobody paid any attention to them since they were glamoured, except the dogs.

When they were at a slightly quieter corner of the park, Lorenzo said, “Please don't tell Andrew about the rune. I don’t want him to know about it and think it might be a possibility for us.”

Alec stopped short. “What?"

“Haven't you noticed that warlocks and vampires tend to find a variety of mortal lovers instead of staying monogamous through all the ages with one of their own immortal kind? Do you know what an immortal most fears when it comes to matters of the heart?” Lorenzo asked him.

A memory came to him: _the key to having no fears, is having nothing to lose_. But if he was immortal, then Magnus wouldn’t ever have to lose him.

Lorenzo smiled sadly and shook his head, as if reading his mind. “Losing a loved one to death is painful, but believe it or not, there are worse things. Imagine loving someone for decades, even centuries, until they’ve become such a big part of who you are, only to lose them to indifference or hate - for someone to live longer than you can love them, and they can love you."

Alec frowned and suddenly became aware that he was fiddling with his wedding ring again. He put his hands firmly behind his back in a soldier’s parade rest to hide the old insecurities which were currently coming out in full force even though he was married to Magnus and was the only person Magnus had ever married.

"Perhaps it will be different for you. Magnus has always been a braver man than I am,” Lorenzo said gently.

Sometimes it was easy to forget that Magnus had his own fears and insecurities too, even if he was much better at hiding them.

"And perhaps it could be different for you too, this time. Because we Nephilim love once, fiercely," Alec told him. 

Lorenzo looked surprised but smiled. “Perhaps. Now, if you happen to need a portal somewhere, I could make one for you, free of charge.”

Alec nodded. “The Brooklyn Academy of Art, please.”

\--

The first thing Magnus had done when he’d heard about what had happened to Clary was to make sure that Clary would be provided for. He’d been on his honeymoon with Alec then, but they’d both portalled back so they could be there for their family and loved ones through the loss. Using Luke’s old police contacts and Magnus’ own network of people who owed favours to him, they’d found out that Clary had gone back to her old home only to find that it had burned down, then gone straight to the police. She apparently didn’t remember anything about Luke or Simon, but she’d remembered that she had been enrolled in the Brooklyn Academy of Art. So Magnus had pulled some strings to get her back her place at the Academy, fully sponsored, and with a modest allowance that gave her enough money for lodging in the student dorms and basic necessities without it seeming too suspicious.

He’d been invited to the opening of her art exhibition, but had obviously had to decline to attend. Instead, he’d received a heartfelt letter of thanks from her that he’d cried over a little. He was sure she would still be at the art exhibition today, and was honestly glad that he had an excuse to see her after all. At the entrance of the Academy, he hesitated and pulled out his phone. Alec should be with him for this, even if he hadn’t handled the news that there was a possibility that Alec could be immortal very well.

It was too much to hope for. Immortality was a huge burden to bear and he’d never have asked it of Alec, but if Izzy and Jace could be immortal too, perhaps the burden could be shared and Alec might consider keeping that rune. He’d braced himself for the fact that he had a limited number of years with Alec for so long that he didn’t know how to deal with the possibility that he could be with Alec for as long as they both wanted this.

He dialled Alec’s number, but the call went straight to voicemail. Alec had apparently turned off his phone, and Magnus could feel disappointment sinking heavy in his gut. It was reasonable, of course. Why would they want to face the yawning abyss of eternal life, the years stretching out endlessly until the world crumbled into dust or ended in fire? Besides, Alec and Izzy were both high ranking members of the Clave now, and if anyone found out that the Inquisitor and Head of the New York Institute had suddenly developed the ability to wield warlock magic, things could get very complicated. 

Then Magnus heard the sound of a portal opening, and he looked up in surprise as Alec stepped out of it.

Alec glanced at the phone in his hand. “Sorry, no cell service in limbo.”

"Alexander." Magnus smiled as Alec walked up to him and kissed him in greeting. 

"So. I'm thinking Clary getting back her memories isn't a random lucky break for us," Alec said, taking Magnus' hand firmly in his. 

“I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not.”

“What, you think the angels gave her back her memories because of Jace?”

“Is that so hard to believe? That love can make miracles happen?” Magnus asked.

Alec lifted Magnus' hand to his lips to kiss the back of his hand. “No, it’s not so hard to believe,” he replied softly.

“Well, let's go take a look at what Clary has been up to,” Magnus said. “I know you might not feel the same, but I’ve missed her.”

“No, I’ve missed her too,” Alec admitted. “Never a dull moment when she’s around. She’s going to make sure we’re never bored for the rest of our lives.”

Magnus laughed and gave Alec’s hand a little squeeze as they walked up the steps of the Brooklyn Academy of Art together.


End file.
